The unceasing spate of insecurities pervading the country has made establishment of state police unarguably desirable. It smacks of mischief to insinuate that the Nigerian Police as centrally constituted are not trying their best. The truth of the matter is that the police are overwhelmed by the audacity of criminals to make crimes ubiquitous. And, crimes are not only ubiquitous now, more people appear to have taken to crimes while crimes are glaringly being committed, adopting innovative colourations. Criminals are so many now that it’s becoming expedient for each household in the country to develop individual security agency!
The most vociferous argument against state police is that state governors will use state police to terrorise perceived enemies and the opposition in their states. This argument takes attestations from the occurrences of the past when the then state governors, banking on the federal might that their party was ruling at the centre, made use of police in their states to gag oppositions and terrorise dissenting public opinions. But as tenable as the argument is, refusing to accede to the establishment of state police on the basis of governors’ ‘perceived’ tyranny is tantamount to saying a pregnant woman must not be allowed to give birth because her child is going to kill her or that the child isn’t going to survive beyond two days! Whether the child will kill the mother or will not survive beyond two days, we just must felicitate the mother for the arrival of a bundle of joy.
State police should be allowed to take root through constitutional amendments, which must also take the powers of having the police at the beck and call of both the president and the governors away from them. There should be National Police Council which members should be constituted through the national assembly and the state houses of assembly. It is the National Police Council which should nominate inspector-general of police, deputy inspector-generals of police, assistant inspector-generals of police and commissioners of police whose appointments must also be approved by both the national assembly and the state houses of assembly. This way, the country remains federalised while the president and the governors will have no say in who becomes what at the level of policing the states in particular and the country in general. The synergy of training and resources that may occur between the federal police and the state police promises to engender effective policing of the country!
It needs be stressed that there cannot be a foolproof, impeccable system as it concerns state police. Brains need be exercised to convoke workable ideas. No matter how infantile suggestions made above appear, they’re meant to open a floodgate of super ideas and stimulate conversations on how to ensure that state police is not left helpless to the lordship of state governors whose tendency to elevate tyranny is innate.
©️Morufu Smith
